MotorMouth

Monday, January 23, 2012

INCUBE8 2012 - Selected Artists Announced

After much deliberation over very high quality applications, our esteemed INCUBE8 panel, artists Sovay Berriman and Katie Davies and the curator of the Exeter Phoenix, Matthew Burrows, have made their selection.

We are delighted to announce that the four selected artists are... Paul Hurley, Susannah Douglas, Bryony Gillard and Ryan Curtis!

Congratulations to you four and thank you to everyone who applied – there were some truly spectacular proposals and we only wish we had room for more. We’d really like to thank our panel who took such care over the selection and read the applications with great enjoyment. They have selected a diverse and exciting programme of exhibitions covering a range of practices and genres of work and we are really proud to be hosting these solo shows at Motorcade/FlashParade.

INCUBE8 is supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

So here is a sneak preview of what’s in store and some important dates for your diaries!

With a background that crosses experimental performance and fine art, Paul Hurley’s recent practice has consisted almost exclusively of live work, much of which involves explorations of ritualised action, endurance and abjection. It teeters past the limits of the mundane self, approaching vulnerability and actuating affect. It evolves affectivity and joy - as in the capacity for being affected to the point of pain or extreme pleasure - which comes to the same.

Suzanne Douglas’ work is concerned with representations of the human figure through portraiture. Pose, gesture, attire and composition are examined, utilized, repeated and reflected. Using a range of sources, fragments are spliced together, reconstructed and reflected back at themselves to affirm notions of a contrived sense of represented identity. Douglas employs collage and highly intricate pencil drawings whose fragility is in contrast to the legacy of portraiture and to the throwaway nature of the photocopied image.

Palindrome Diptych centres around a large scale collage piece from which a new series of drawings is drawn and then mirrored. The relationships between the collage, the pairs of drawing and the space are explored through these repeated elements.

Situated somewhere between performance, action, sound, text and occasionally object, Bryony Gillard’s practice draws upon common social forms of interaction, traditional customs and accepted cultural exchanges. By collaborating with artists or individuals from different professions, Gillard questions authorship and explores methods of instigating subtle or non-confrontational forms of participation.

Last Orders is a live work and accompanying static installation which involves removing last orders bells from selected pubs and replacing them with diatonic hand bells. The work explores a process of negotiation, persuasion and collaboration between Gillard and the establishments.

Ryan Curtis

INCUBE8 Part IV: There is great chaos under heaven: the situation is excellent

Ryan Curtis' practice of sculpture and installation operates at the edge of existence, creating an almost in-between state that paradoxically insists on a more solid importance to be placed upon the object. Using found materials of personal significance with a distinct aesthetic flavour, Curtis’ work explores the paradox of revolutionary ideology and utopian dreaming using a darkly satirical and self referential humour.

Using film, sculptural installation and other objects, There is great chaos under heaven... references aesthetics from bolshevik constructivism, mid to late 20th century blockbuster science-fiction film and nuclear post-apocalyptic representations. The precarious qualities of balance situate the work on the precipice of existence, highlighting its inherent futility.